Field of the Invention
The aspect of the embodiments relates to an information processing apparatus and an information processing method.
Description of the Related Art
Heretofore, the personalization of a head related transfer function (HRTF) is a challenge for the technology to reproduce stereophonic sound using the HRTF. The term “HRTF” described herein refers to a function representing transmission characteristics from a sound source to the ears of a viewer. The term “HRTF” is used to represent a transmission function for a sound source in one direction, and also represent a data set of transmission functions for sound sources in a plurality of directions. Herein, a data set of transmission functions for each of sound sources in a plurality of directions is referred to as a “head related transfer function set (HRTF set)”.
Morise (Morise Masanori, and five others, “Personalization of Head Related Transfer Function for Mixed Reality System Using Audio and Visual Senses”, the Journal of Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan C, August 2010, Vol. 130, No. 8, pp. 1466-1467) discloses one example of a technique for personalization of the HRTF set. Morise discloses a method for combining a plurality of HRTF sets to generate one HRTF with which a user is likely to feel a sense of localization of sound. In this method, to smoothly combine head related transfer function sets (HRTF sets), weighted addition is performed on two HRTF sets to be combined in a range of ±20 degrees of the combining boundary.
However, in the technique disclosed by Morise, the boundary between HRTF sets is fixed regardless of the characteristics of the HRTF sets to be combined. As a result, the HRTF sets may be combined unnaturally at a boundary portion depending on the characteristics of the HRTF sets to be combined, so that the user may perceive sound as being discontinuous at the boundary portion.